From the Baroness’s Diary III

Chapter 30

Chapter Thirty

I am sweating through my best dark Sunday suit as I stand at the front of the church with my brothers.

I thought everything was going to be alright.

But now as I stand here, the church as full as it is every Sunday, I know I’ve been kidding myself. The gut-twisting feeling is back. I am going to be sick.

Agreeing to bring Chloé to church is just a dumb little indulgence to please her, something I said without thinking.

I don’t go to church anymore. I don’t want to be here. Not now. Not ever.

Saying yes to her request was only a comforting sound I had made. Just stupidly agreeing to it in the moment, with no thought of actually acting on it.

Much less on a Sunday morning, with my mother, Anna, Salvatore, and Enzo, as if we were the happy and well-structured family everyone thinks we are. La Famiglia Di Luca. Or simply, La Famiglia.

Not because we are part of the Cosa Nostra, no. We have nothing to do with the mafia. But my mother…hmm…how to say it? She was very liberal with her affections in her young age. After Enzo’s father, Genaro, died, she married his brother, Giovanni. That was quite common in the nineteenth century here in Sicily. And even in the beginning of the twentieth century.

Chauvinist, Catholic society trying to keep the money in the family, and all that. So, Giovanni Di Luca raised Enzo and Isabella, our deceased sister, as his own son along with Salvatore, his rightful child, and me, his supposedly second child.

But if what Father Roberto told me was right, I am son of Luigi, the youngest brother.

Funny thing is, this seems to be a family…malady. I found a very old diary in the attic a few months ago and it told the story of three brothers who were supposedly my great-grandmother’s husbands. Not that I think it’s a bad thing, mind you, just…it’s not common.

Well, but when Chloé asked me this morning to accompany her to church, I was so shocked, I froze where I stood. Not exactly frozen because I nodded, accepting her invite.

After, I’d meant to bail from it, saying I was feeling sick—not that I wasn’t, I was. I still am. My stomach is a mass of knots and a cauldron of acid.

But then I saw her face.

Chloé is beautiful, sure. And this morning she was even more beautiful, she had an angelic look to her, so different from the feisty and sexy woman who had barged into our lives.

My eyes hungrily devoured every detail.

Her tiny waist. Her full bosom and the hint of cleavage revealed by the sweet, demure little flowered dress. She was even wearing a hat with a wide brim, like a good god-fearing woman, and it shadows her huge eyes. And those eyes do something to me every time I look at them.

I swallowed but my mouth was so dry I barely managed it.

But her beauty wasn’t what stopped me from lying.

“Are you coming with me? With…us?” she asked me as she noticed I was dragging behind, stalling, trying to find an excuse to stay at home.

She sounded too uncertain even for her, which surprised me.

But then I realized she was afraid. It was so clear on her face. She believed she needed to confess because she thought she was going to hell.

For a while, I have felt the same.

Well, not exactly the same, but close.

In that instant, I pledged my life to her. It had not even been a conscious thought.

I just know throughout my entire being that whatever it takes, I would protect her from whatever it is, even from some irrational fear of a condemning and cruel God, or from any real threat.

I will stand at her side. No matter what.

I have never felt anything with such soul-deep certainty before.

And the best way to protect her is to go through with the farce of acting like I want to be here in this goddamn church.

The idea of stepping into a church nauseates me.

Not that I have anything against God, no. My problem is with the people who profess His word. Filthy, disgusting, pieces of s**t.

“Do you want to pray with me?” Chloé asks, stretching out her hand to me.

She is so trusting and gentle.

I swallow back bile and smile at her. “Thank you.”

But she would never have held my hand if she knew the things I’m praying for.

I was once one of those small boys, happily singing hymns and helping with the small things during service. There was a time when I considered entering the priesthood, of becoming a holy man.

I thought I would like the religious service: I felt at peace inside a church, I liked to help others, and more, I believed in God. Strange as it is, I still do, in my own way.

But that ended when Father Amedeo died and a new priest, Father Roberto, was sent to replace him.

Father Roberto was young and lively. He had many new ideas to bring his parishioners back to the Lord. Ha. The irony.

I still remember vividly the day he asked me to help him organize and catalog the books in the small church library. It all began like this, with invitations to stay past the usual hours and help him with one small thing or another.

I was just a kid, barely eleven. I felt important that he had chosen me above all the other older boys.

And my mother and father were the dumb fuckers who had the bright idea to let me sleep there when Father Roberto called my home one afternoon, telling them I was a very intelligent boy and it was a pity I couldn’t stay for his lessons. He told them he would teach me things the teachers in the school couldn’t.

Oh, and did he.

I close my eyes tightly at the memories and I swallow hard against the bile that rises at the memory of those hideous years.

Inferno.

When my parents agreed to me sleeping every Wednesday in the parish house, I thought it was my salvation. I loved to study and I was greedy for new lessons. But I was quick to find out that Father Roberto’s lessons were the first step on a one-way trip to hell.

It turns out, in a world where priests are forbidden to marry or to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh with women, the lanky, skinny boy who trusts them and helps with service is a perfectly adequate substitute for a r****t bastard.

For years and years and years, I slept in the house behind this same church I am seated in this moment.

People think they know, but they don’t. They have no idea how depraved these fuckers are.

It is not only what they do to our bodies, but what they do to our minds. How can a person believe in God after enduring such a thing?

So I did what I had to do to get by, to live with myself. To survive, because this is what I am: a survivor.

And I know Chloé thinks I hate her most of the time. I don’t. I am not man enough to be with her, that’s all.

I couldn’t even protect myself, how can I pretend to be man enough to protect her?

I open my eyes and look around.

Enzo and Salvatore—they are real men.

It was Enzo who suspected something was wrong with me. I am not sure how. On his vacations from university, he began to create excuses to take me home after Father Roberto’s nightly lessons, and I took them in stride.

And when Enzo went back to Roma to study, Salvatore replaced him.

It was then that I was certain they knew something.

But it was too late by then. Years and years too late.

I’d already been used and defiled in every way imaginable.

Beyond the imaginable. I’d been treated more like a f*****g hole, a s*x slave, than a human being.

If anyone is worthy of a woman like Chloé, and the more I get to know her, the less I think anyone is—but still, Enzo and Salvatore are.

And here I am, ruining their relationship.

I should leave. Right now.

Stand up, make my excuses—or not—and run out the back of the church.

Run and keep running.

Now.

As if sensing what I am about to do, Chloé puts her hand in mine. “Angelo?”

My head jerks up. “Sì?”

Her long, beautiful brown hair sets into large curls on her shoulders and falls down to frame her breasts and I have to look away because I feel the first stirrings of an erection.

Oh, it’s not as if I am emasculated, no.

Nor am I gay.

I like women. I can get an erection pretty easily and my right hand has enough work cut out for it. Especially since she has arrived.

It’s just…I don’t know…I don’t feel man enough to be alone with a woman, to satisfy her in ways that real men like my brothers can.

Like a magnet, I am dragged every night near to the room where she sleeps, where my brothers enjoy her.

She points to the book of Psalms. “Do you want to share?”

Fuck my past.

Fuck right and wrong.

In that moment, I know: I want to share. But not the book of Psalms. I want to share her.

Perhaps, it is the most selfish act of my life and maybe I’ll never forgive myself for it, but I find myself saying, “Sì.”

Just to be close to her.

I know, come hell or high water, I am going to stay exactly where I am and I will do whatever this sweet, strong, and sexy woman asks of me.